Category: Writing
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A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
This essay was originally published in You on Target, an anthology of essays about the Doctor Who Target novelisations, released in 2020. In it, I talk about (among other things) Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of the Doctor Who story Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Thank you to Christopher Bryant for commissioning it. 66 million years ago Somehow, […]
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Blake’s 7: The SevenFold Crown
This review of a very early Blake’s 7 audio drama was published in TV Zone issue 99 (February 1998). I can only barely remember writing it, and I didn’t actually have a copy of it anywhere until recently, when Peter Griffiths, who had commissioned me to write it, sent me a copy of it he […]
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The Wrath of Conn
This essay was first published in Outside In: Makes It So, a collection of essays published by ATB Publishing in 2017 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. For this collection, each author contributed an essay on a single episode or movie. My essay is based on the Series 4 […]
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Burning Star Wars to the ground
“I didn’t actually come here to free slaves.” Qui-Gon Jinn, The Phantom Menace (1999) Perhaps the most baffling complaint about The Last Jedi is this: the Finn and Rose subplot is poorly integrated, and could easily be cut without damaging the film. I’ve seen this complaint over and over again, even in reviews that are broadly insightful […]
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What to expect from Season 9
With the debut of Doctor Who season 9 only weeks away, it’s time to ask ourselves what we can expect to see from this exciting new series of Doctor Who. THE DALEKS ARE BACK! For the first time in 5 years, and for the first time ever on TV in colour, the Daleks (and their gorgeous blonde secretarial […]
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Dear Neato Robotics people,
Dear Neato Robotics people, My partner and I are the proud owners of one of your robot vacuum cleaners. It’s one of five vacuum cleaners he has bought for the house, and he really loves it. He has named it Alice. It’s something that remains undiagnosed, I’m afraid. Anyway. We soldier on. He is particularly […]
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Guns and Frocks
This adventure was going to require a serious frock. Paul Cornell, Human Nature, Chapter 1 It’s 18 February 1995. My friends and I are attending Tri(c)on, a Doctor Who convention which is being held at the Parramatta Travelodge in a suburb of Sydney called Rosehill. Mark Strickson is the special guest: he has made the 500-kilometre […]